Mojang began as the name on one programmer’s spare-time project. Markus Persson put the first version of Minecraft online in May 2009 under the name Mojang Specifications, sold it while it was still unfinished, and kept selling it. Only in October 2010, when the game was already making money, did he sign the papers that made Mojang a company, with two former colleagues. Four years later Microsoft paid $2.5 billion for it.
Fast facts
- Founded by: Markus Persson, as Mojang Specifications in 2009; Mojang the company was set up in October 2010 with Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh.
- Based: Stockholm, Sweden.
- Games: Minecraft; Scrolls (2014), later Caller’s Bane; Minecraft Dungeons (2020, with Double Eleven); Minecraft Legends (2023). Mojang also published Oxeye Game Studio’s Cobalt.
- Owner: Microsoft, since 6 November 2014.
- Name: Mojang Studios since May 2020.
Three friends from Midasplayer
Edge’s studio profile of February 2012 tells the story. Persson and Porser had worked together at Midasplayer, the company behind the King.com games portal. Persson left (“They didn’t like us making games in our spare time,” Porser remembered) and went to work for Carl Manneh, chief executive of a photo-sharing site. About a year later, when Minecraft began to take off, Persson looked for partners to start a studio. He asked Porser first, who was still at Midasplayer, and Manneh joined them as chief executive.
When Edge visited, on a December morning in Stockholm, Mojang had 13 staff. Minecraft had 18 million registered accounts, and on the day of the visit it sold 9,510 copies at £16.95 each. Persson had handed the game over to Jens Bergensten and was deciding what to make next, and Mojang had turned down around 150 offers of venture capital. One investor, Napster’s founder Sean Parker, had flown Persson to London by private jet for the night. Mojang was also publishing Cobalt, a two-dimensional multiplayer platform game by the local studio Oxeye, and Manneh said the company would “prefer” not to release games in a finished state but to let players in early, as it had with Minecraft.
Scrolls and 0x10c
Mojang’s second game was Porser’s. Scrolls was a collectable card game played out on a battlefield, in which each player builds a deck from a set of scrolls and tries to destroy three of the opponent’s five idols. Edge found in 2012 that it was “more than a passion project” and that Mojang meant to run a long beta, tuning the game “depending on player feedback”. It left beta in December 2014. Mojang closed its online services in February 2018 and re-released it free that June as Caller’s Bane.
Persson’s own next game, the space game 0x10c, never appeared. He set it aside in 2013, citing a lack of interest and a creative block.
Microsoft
On 15 September 2014 Microsoft announced that it would buy Mojang for $2.5 billion, and the deal closed on 6 November 2014. Persson, Porser and Manneh, the company’s three owners, all left. Minecraft carried on under Microsoft as two lines: the original Java version for computers and the Bedrock Edition shared by consoles, phones and Windows. The Minecraft entry tells that part of the story.
Mojang grew into a group of studios and renamed itself Mojang Studios in May 2020, the same month it released Minecraft Dungeons, a dungeon crawler made with Double Eleven. Wireframe called it “Mojang’s first major spin-off for PC and consoles” and found it “mostly great fun while it lasts” but “strangely incomplete” at £15.99. Minecraft Legends, an action strategy game, followed in 2023.
Sources
- Edge issue 237, February 2012, studio profile of Mojang, pp. 79–84: Mojang Specifications from May 2009 and the company from mid-October 2010; Midasplayer, Porser’s quote and Manneh’s photo-sharing site; 13 staff in Stockholm; Manneh as chief executive; 18 million registered accounts and 9,510 copies in a day; Bergensten taking over Minecraft; 150 venture-capital proposals and Sean Parker; Cobalt and Oxeye; Scrolls and its rules; Manneh on releasing games early.
- Edge Christmas 2012 issue (248), pp. 62–63: Scrolls preview (“more than a passion project”; the beta).
- Microsoft News Center, “Minecraft to join Microsoft”, 15 September 2014 (web). https://news.microsoft.com/source/2014/09/15/minecraft-to-join-microsoft/
- Microsoft Corporation, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 31 December 2014 (web): “On November 6, 2014, we acquired Mojang Synergies AB”. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000789019/000119312515020351/d827041d10q.htm
- GeekWire, “Microsoft reaches $2.5B deal for Minecraft maker Mojang; Notch and other founders leaving”, 15 September 2014 (web, secondary). https://www.geekwire.com/2014/breaking-microsoft-reaches-2-5b-deal-minecraft-maker-mojang/
- Wireframe issue 40, June 2020: Minecraft Dungeons DLC. Issue 41, July 2020, pp. 92–93: Minecraft Dungeons review (Mojang and Double Eleven; £15.99).
- Wikipedia, “Mojang Studios” (web, secondary): Scrolls out of beta in December 2014, its online services closed in February 2018 and its free re-release as Caller’s Bane in June 2018; 0x10c shelved in 2013; the renaming to Mojang Studios on 17 May 2020; Minecraft Legends in 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang_Studios